Undergraduate Computer Science Programs Research Articles

Planning for Software Maintenance Education Within a Computee Science Framework

This article proposes that software maintainers would benefit from specialized education and training with regard to software maintenance. A clear distinction is drawn between the tasks involved in software development and those involved in software maintenance. It is shown that neither the average computer science undergraduate degree program, nor experience in software development fully prepare a programmer for the particular challenges faced in software maintenance. The traditional and evolving coverage of software maintenance in U.S. graduate and undergraduate computer science and software engineering degree programs is discussed. A set of proposals is given for introducing undergraduate computer science students to the field of software maintenance. An alternate approach is recommended for introducing experienced development programmers to software maintenance.

The object-oriented paradigm in the undergraduate curriculum

Many undergraduate computer science programs have not yet incorporated the object-oriented paradigm into their curriculum or have done so only minimally. Furthermore, programs which do teach object-oriented design and programming do so in a variety of ways. This paper presents a survey of different approaches to incorporating the object-oriented paradigm into the undergraduate curriculum. Data were complied from experiences related in the current literature and from a survey of undergraduate programs in Connecticut. To round out the discussion, feedback from local industry with regard to its use of this methodology is included: specifically, is there a need for proficiency in object-oriented design and programming?

Opening of the workshop

It is my great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to welcome you to Uppsala University for discussions on the very interesting subject of muon catalysed fusion. The University is 515 years old and the oldest in Scandinavia. It has about 20 000 students and a staff of 5 000 persons. One of the great scientists of our University was Carl yon Linn6, who lived in the 18th century and who conceived the sexual system of plants. His Systema Naturae from 1735, when he was 28 years old, classified plants, animals and minerals. In the 20th century the University has maintained a high standard and has seen six of its scholars receive the Nobel Prize. Today it is a modern university integrated in a wide net of international contacts. Among the 7 faculties, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences is the largest, having 80 chairs in 6 different subject fields: mathematics, physics, chemistry, geosciences, biology and technology. About 60 doctorate degrees are awarded each year. There are four-year undergraduate study programs in computer science and natural sciences including mathematics. The engineering programs last four and a half year and presently cover engineering physics, material physics and a newly started program in molecular biotechnology. The latter program is unique for Sweden and profits from the strong research profile in the life sciences. In addition there is also a two-year engineering school. Altogether about 3 000 students are enrolled in the study programs. Material science is one of the strong interdisciplinary research fields that has profited from innovations in surface sciences such as the ESCA method developed to high precision by Kai Siegbahn and the next speaker Carl Nordling. One of the University's next priorities is a new center for material science named the Angstr6m laboratory after a well-known Uppsala scientist who lent his name to a unit defining length on the atomic scale. The name suits well the center where structures of carbon and silicon will be manufactured with atomic precision and microrobots will be developed for a variety of uses in the human blood vessels or in the pipes of a nuclear reactor. Fresh-water research is another interdisciplinary field of increasing importance. The Uppsala Water Center coordinates research in 20 different departments also coming from the neighbouring University of Agriculture and two national institutes, the National Environment Protection Board and the Geological Survey

Mathematics of Computing

After years of discussion, the consensus among academic computer scientists seems to be that undergraduate computer science programs need more mathematical content. This mathematical content is not to be found in areas such as calculus and differential equation but in areas such as discrete mathematics and mathematical logic. The objective of this article is to re‐examine the central role of mathematics in computer science by reviewing the undergraduate computer science curriculum from Curricula ‘68 to the current Computing Curricula 1991. The trend toward a greater concentration in such courses as discrete mathematics will be explored. Furthermore, we collected and put together comments and concerns of three prominent computer scientists about the importance of mathematics in computing science and lack of mathematical content in computer science programs. We then look at one area of computer science amenable to mathematical treatment. This area, software specification, is one of the important phases of t...

Computing Curricula 1991

ACM first published recommendations for undergraduate programs in computer science in 1968 in a report called “Curriculum '68.” The report was produced as an activity of the ACM Education Board, which since then has been providing updates to recommendations for computer science programs as well as recommendations for other academic programs in computing.

Teaching Data Communications to Computer Science Students

Courses in data communications are becoming commonplace in many undergraduate computer science programs. The reason for this is abundantly clear: Data communications is pervading almost all aspects of computer science. However, to many students, data communications can be a difficult subject to master without having either prior experience in data communications or an electrical engineering background. In this article, the composition of a one‐term course in data communications intended for computer science students without a background in either data communications or electrical engineering is presented. It includes a description of the course, its objectives, and assignments.

A comprehensive mathematics curriculum for the computer science undergraduate program

Mathematics requirements for computer science majors have been discussed in many papers and panels during the last twenty years. This paper, while reexamining this issue, presents a comprehensive view of the total mathematics requirement for a computer science undergraduate program rather than discuss some course contents in a piecemeal fashion. The time distribution among different topics, the depth of the topics to be covered and the minimal qualifications of the intructor to teach the courses are also included.

Development and documentation of computer programs in undergraduate computer science programs

Until recently, introductory programming classes in the Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota, Duluth, concentrated on writing code. Not until the junior or senior year were students required to adhere to basic principles of software engineering. As might be expected, by their junior year students' bad habits, like coding while designing or inserting comments last, were firmly entrenched and difficult, if not impossible, to undo. The solution, it seemed to us, was to prevent bad habits right from the start. Consequently, we developed guidelines for designing and documenting the entire programming effort, from problem statement to post mortem. The guidelines include such steps as: algorithm development in high-level pseudocode with stepwise refinements, structure diagrams with data flow, detailed test descriptions, testing results, and a description of all known bugs. For a given assignment, the instructor chooses the steps to be completed, allowing for flexibility and appropriateness in the design and documentation. Results have been extremely positive. Students start earlier and produce better organized solutions. More students solve the problems correctly. Most importantly, students develop design and documentation skills in the freshman year that carry through and are improved over their four-year stay. Because of this initial success, our department has adopted these guidelines uniformly in all programming classes. In this paper we will describe our guidelines and give some details of their use. We will discuss the philosophy that led us to develop these guidelines and present our observations of their effectiveness.

The use of microcomputers in an applied computer science program

The use of microcomputers in an undergraduate computer science program may be handled in several ways. One approach is to first teach the use of a microcomputer followed by the design of a microcomputer system, and then to send the students out to recommend and install a complete microcomputer system for some organization in the community. In this way, not only do the students learn how to program a microcomputer, but they also learn the internals of the microcomputer, the design of a microcomputer system, the assembly language on a microcomputer, and a final, total application of all their knowledge to a real life situation. We feel this greatly improves upon the common combination of lectures and programming assignments with realistic microcomputer system design and implementation.

Adapting Curriculum 78 to a small university environment

Curriculum 78 was developed to present an undergraduate degree program in Computer Science at any university, with appropriate adaptation to each specific environment; in general the degree program suggested applies most naturally to relatively large universities. Because small universities have limited resources—students, faculty, computing facilities—the implementation of Curriculum 78 requires careful modification to fit the particular environment. By organizing the topics covered by the suggested courses in Curriculum 78 in different combinations and emphasizing microcomputers, the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Loyola University can offer a complete degree program in Computer Science in spite of its limited resources.

A one-year introductory course for computer science undergraduate program

The approach taken to teach the first undergraduate course in computer science varies a great deal. The one that places major emphasis on the teaching of a programming language is still widely used. We find many drawbacks with this approach. In our opinion, the discussion of introductory computer concepts and problem-solving techniques should precede the coverage of the syntax of a programming language. It is also our belief that basic data structure concepts should be presented in the first course and discussed independently of any particular programming language considerations. Finally, we don't subscribe to the view that teaching of programming styles should be delayed until later courses. With these ideas in view, we present in this paper the outline of a one-year beginning course for the computer science undergraduate degree program.

The computer science minor, a description and a proposal

Along with undergraduate and graduate degree programs in computer science, the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of South Carolina (USC) offers a computer science minor. The recommended computer science minor at USC consists of the first four courses of the undergraduate computer science degree program. A survey of the graduates of 1977 from the College of Science and Mathematics at USC shows that there was a surprisingly low number of students completing the computer science minor. Several reasons are given for this, and a proposal is presented for modifications in the computer science minor.The Computer Science Minor at USC

Curriculum '78: recommendations for the undergraduate program in computer science— a report of the ACM curriculum committee on computer science

Contained in this report are the recommendations for the undergraduate degree program in Computer Science of the Curriculum Committee on Computer Science (C 3 S) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The core curriculum common to all computer science undergraduate programs is presented in terms of elementary level topics and courses, and intermediate level courses. Elective courses, used to round out an undergraduate program, are then discussed, and the entire program including the computer science component and other material is presented. Issues related to undergraduate computer science education, such as service courses, supporting areas, continuing education, facilities, staff, and articulation are presented.

Newtruck

Recent literature in both the computer science [1,2] and data processing [3,4] communities encourages the involvement of computing students not only in formal classroom experiences but also in “real world” learning experiences such as project participation and management, effective approaches to “real world” problem solving, interaction with people from different disciplines, interaction with people from similar disciplines, interaction with people in the “real world,” budget management, formal report writing, and the ability to accurately document a system. ACM has recognized this need in both the 1977 report of C 3 S [5] and in the more recent “Curriculum '78: Recommendations for the Undergraduate Program in Computer Science [6].” Recent articles in the SIGCSE Bulletin [1] as well as other computer education journals indicate that universities are responding to this need through one or more of the following: 1. Integration of “real world” projects into the existing curriculum. 2. Special projects courses added to the existing curriculum where students are responsible to the university only. 3. Special projects done in conjunction with the university and some outside organization. The student is responsible to both the university and to the outside organization. 4. Cooperative education in which the student works part-time for an outside organization.

A software tool for teaching Data Structures

Our Data Structures Course, first taught in 1973, was originally conceived as the keystone course of our computer science curriculum. Our curriculum's original design was influenced by Curriculum '68 and the undergraduate computer science program at Penn State University. However, we had to adapt our program to our small college environment and include a curriculum track with a business emphasis. We felt that regardless of which track in our program a student might follow, theory/systems or business/DP, there must be a strong nucleus common to both tracks. For this reason we concentrated on developing four strong courses that would be given as the freshman and sophomore year component of our curriculum. As part of this, we also saw the need for software tools to support these courses. From this, a structured programming preprocessor evolved. However, as part of this preprocessor we included timing and dynamic storage allocation features. Through a strong emphasis on structured programming that begins with our first computer science course, our second course introduces many discrete structure concepts-queues, stacks, trees, graphs, etc... Our third course is a course in assembler level programming and computer organization. These courses provide a strong foundation for our Data Structures course.

A survey of graduates from an undergraduate computer science program

A survey of the computer science graduates at Angelo State University was conducted in May, 1977. Data was gathered concerning starting salary, current salary, job satisfaction, job location and job duties. The computer science program at Angelo State University was established in 1970 and since that time, 37 students have obtained undergraduate computer science degrees.Two degree programs in computer science are offered at Angelo State. The Bachelor of Science degree is designed to prepare students for further study in computer science and is tailored to students interested in the scientific aspects and applications of computing. Advanced undergraduate courses in this degree program prepare a student for employment as a systems programmer or software specialist. The Bachelor of Business Administration degree emphasizes commercial or business data processing applications and is designed to prepare students to enter the job market as business programmers or computer center managers.The data obtained from the survey was summarized for all computer science graduates and then considered separately for the Bachelor of Science graduates and then the Bachelor of Business Administration graduates. It was determined that the average starting salary for all graduates was $11,809 and the average current salary is $14,403. The average starting salary for Bachelor of Science graduates was $12,500 while the current average salary for Bachelor of Science graduates is $15,550. The Bachelor of Business Administration graduates received an average starting salary of $10,600 and have a current average salary of $12,395. The data obtained from the survey has also been analyzed according to the different industries in which the graduates are employed and in terms of the geographical location of their employment. While the results obtained from this survey are for a single small school, some generalizations can be made concerning the success of an undergraduate computer science curriculum that has been established according to the "Curriculum '68" guidelines.Much can be learned from surveying our computer science graduates. The valuable information that our graduates give us can do much to enhance and improve the computer science curriculum. This information can also do much to keep our current students informed as to what to expect in the marketplace.

A Comparison of the ACMIC3S and the IEEE/CSE Model Curriculum Subcommittee Recommendations

The year 1977 saw the independent development of two significant documents in the field of computer science and engineering education: "Curriculum Recommendations for the Undergraduate Program in Computer Science: A Report of the ACM Committee on Curriculum in Computer Science," <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> and A Curriculum in Computer Science and Engineering <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> prepared by the Model Curricula Subcommittee of the IEEE Computer Society. The work leading to the publication of these reports was independent, though the commmittees did maintain liaison.

Curriculum recommendations for the undergraduate program in computer science

Curriculum recommendations for the undergraduate program in computer science

Effect of laboratory facilities on computer science curriculum

This paper describes the effect that the introduction of computing laboratory facilities has had on the curriculum of an undergraduate Computer Science program. From its initial use by only one course, the laboratory has grown gradually both in terms of equipment and involvement with the Department's teaching program. Demands placed on the laboratory by various courses have influenced the acquisition of new equipment. Conversely, with the addition of new and varied equipment, it was possible to incorporate the laboratory into more courses. The Paper describes this interplay between the development of the laboratory and the growth of the Department. Problems such as maintenance and support staff for the laboratory are discussed whenever they have affected decisions on the use of the laboratory by a course or the selection of equipment.

A diversified undergraduate computer science program

This paper introduces a set of unique undergraduate computer science programs, some of which have been operating for more than two years at Rochester Institute of Technology. These programs are intended to meet current computer science manpower demands where as a generalized computer science curriculum is not sufficient to cover the range of students required by such demands. As is shown in Figure 1, the set of programs extend from a general computer science curriculum to cover several quasi-specialized areas.